I'm on team work/life balance but, in this case, I agree. First job out of school I had an engineering job (not software) in the oil business. Spent lots of time living in shipyards and offshore. Long days. Etc.

But I had a lot of responsibility. Was sort of thrown in the deep end with respect to a lot of things. It was a great experience out of school and, in retrospect, was absolutely the right job choice relative to my other options.

Would I have wanted to have done it long-term? (I left after 3 years to get another degree.) No way.